Quotes about socialism

A collection of quotes on the topic of socialism, people, other, politics.

Woody Allen quote: “I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social.”

Quotes about socialism

“Economic, social, political, environmental and population development in Thailand have created a series of problems that must be addressed addressesed by education.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

The Reason and the objective of Education Reform

Education, Problem

“Education is perceived as a crucial instrument for increasing productivity and income, skills, competency of human resources, and sustainable growth. In the end, education helps reduce social problems, and improves quality of life so that people can live equally with others in society.”

Sukavich Rangsitpol (1935) Thai politician

Education helps reduce social problems and improves quality of life

People, Help, Problem, Education

“Men characterize pornography as something mental because their minds, their thoughts, their dreams, their fantasies, are more real to them than women's bodies or lives; in fact, men have used their social power to characterize a $10-billion-a-year trade in women as fantasy.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Pornography, Men Possessing Women (1979)

Women, Men, Dreams

“The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm “Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?”

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher (1932). “Those Damned Nazis,” (Nazi propaganda pamphlet).
1930s

Life, War, Freedom, Communication

“Competition is dangerous, socially offensive, considered right and normal, because you are brought up to that value system. What kind of competition did Jesus have? What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said, "I'm the most important organ!" And the liver said, "I am. And I want a Free Enterprise system!"”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

You'd rot away in a month if every organ of your body went out for itself. 1974 Larry King Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVOPkGAtt48

“Those who hate to be socially involved, they are in love with their loneliness and those who feel alone in their company are the true lovers of social acceptance. Either way, life must be balanced between love and hate.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Hate, Loneliness, Lovers, Way

“Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Variant: Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.
Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

Religion

“People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

People, World, Feeling

“When you think of God, your God is the projection of your own thought, the result of social influences. You can think only of the known; you cannot think of the unknown, you cannot concentrate on truth.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. VI, p 5, "First Talk in Rajahmundry (20 November 1949) http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=335&chid=4655&w=%22You+cannot+find+truth+through+anybody+else%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 491120 Posthumous publications, The Collected Works Context: You cannot find truth through anybody else. How can you? Surely, truth is not something static; it has no fixed abode; it is not an end, a goal. On the contrary, it is living, dynamic, alert, alive. How can it be an end? If truth is a fixed point, it is no longer truth; it is then a mere opinion. Sir, truth is the unknown, and a mind that is seeking truth will never find it. For mind is made up of the known; it is the result of the past, the outcome of time — which you can observe for yourself. Mind is the instrument of the known; hence it cannot find the unknown; it can only move from the known to the known. When the mind seeks truth, the truth it has read about in books, that "truth" is self-projected, for then the mind is merely in pursuit of the known, a more satisfactory known than the previous one. When the mind seeks truth, it is seeking its own self-projection, not truth. After all, an ideal is self-projected; it is fictitious, unreal. What is real is what is, not the opposite. But a mind that is seeking reality, seeking God, is seeking the known. When you think of God, your God is the projection of your own thought, the result of social influences. You can think only of the known; you cannot think of the unknown, you cannot concentrate on truth. The moment you think of the unknown, it is merely the self-projected known. So, God or truth cannot be thought about. If you think about it, it is not truth. Truth cannot be sought; it comes to you. You can go after only what is known. When the mind is not tortured by the known, by the effects of the known, then only can truth reveal itself. Truth is in every leaf, every tear; it is to be known from moment to moment. No one can lead you to truth; and if anyone leads you, it can only be to the known.

God, Truth, Thinking

“Socialism is the only political form that has democratic values.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black… But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

The Tampa Tribune (1 April 1980)

Sport

“Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, Nature

“Reality has changed, and we changed with it. However, I never changed sides. I have always been on the side of justice, democracy and social equality.”

Dilma Rousseff (1947) 36th President of Brazil

Interview http://veja.abril.com.br/240210/candidata-conquista-ninho-p-050.shtml to Veja magazine, February 24. 2010

Justice, Democracy, Reality, Change

“We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism! We are against Marxism, but for true socialism! We are for the first German national state of a socialist nature! We are for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

“Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?” https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken, Nazi propaganda pamphlet (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher, 1932) / 1930s

Nature

“Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined RSS wing of anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Family, Religion, History, Thinking

“It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagariazed that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

to Michael Azerrad in an interview from 1992 or 1993, in Kurt Cobain: About a Son
Interviews (1989-1994), Video

Dead, Music, Thinking, World

“The British ruling class were not altogether wrong in thinking that Fascism was on their side. It is a fact that any rich man, unless he is a Jew, has less to fear from Fascism than from either Communism or democratic Socialism. One ought never to forget this, for nearly the whole of German and Italian propaganda is designed to cover it up.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § IV
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Forgetting, Fear, Thinking, Communication

“Inside the united and indivisible universal Wholeness, every thought and action we make concerning the part, creates the reaction of the whole towards us. In short, whatever we are doing and in whichever way we are doing it, has a multiple effect on us, from every “corner” of the universal unity. The meaning of universal, indivisible unity creates a new social and ecological awareness, since the social and the nature are structural parts of the whole and every action we take against it, results in a reaction of the whole cosmic creation against us.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos

Nature, Universe, Way, Making love

“In a socialist society, people are always motivated to achieve unity and the truest form of freedom— Organising themselves and coming to help those who are in need. You will find organisations such as social welfare, that take great care and give support to the poor, unemployed, old people, widows, etc.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Freedom, People, Motivation, Support

“Music is so important to us. We hear music from the moment we are born, often via lullabies, and through many of the most important occasions in our lives, from graduations to weddings to funerals. There is something about music that seems to bring us closer to each other and help us come together as a community.
Humans are wired for music. Researchers recently discovered that we have a dedicated part of our brain for processing music, supporting the theory that it has a special, important function in our lives.
Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in the brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. Now new research suggests that playing music or singing together may be particularly potent in bringing about social closeness through the release of endorphins.
Through singing, drumming, and dancing—all resulted in participants having higher pain thresholds (a proxy measure for increased endorphin release in the brain) in comparison to listening to music alone. In addition, the performance of music resulted in greater positive emotion, suggesting one pathway through which people feel closer to one another when playing music together is through endorphin release.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.”

Amartya Sen book The Idea of Justice

Source: The Idea of Justice

Justice

“Socialism is not a science, a sociology in miniature: it is a cry of pain.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Pain, Science, Cry

“Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions- to define, classify, control, and regulate people.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

People, School

“Nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of social animals.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

"A Man's Leisure Time," 1920; Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 8.
1920s
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

Animals

“No social problem is as universal as the oppression of the child”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Problem, Universe

“The two party electoral system performs the essential function of helping to legitimate the existing social order.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 11, p. 179

Help

“Modernity is one of the most delicate and vital issues confronting us, the people of non-European countries and Islamic societies. A more important issue is the relationship between an imposed modernization and genuine civilization. We must discover if modernity as is claimed is a synonym for being civilised, or if it is an altogether different issue and social phenomenon having no relation to civilisation at all. Unfortunately modernity has been imposed on us, the non-European nations, in the guise of civilization.”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Source: Reflections of Humanity, (1984), p. 17: Second paragraph.

People, Country

“Speech has both an individual and a social side, and we cannot conceive of one without the other.”

Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics

Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 9

“[Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.”

Jürgen Habermas book Knowledge and Human Interests

Source: Knowledge and Human Interests, 1971, p. 310 as cited in: Dominick LaCapra (1983) Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language. p. 170

Science, Dependency

“Thus the social position of women is in this respect very similar to that of philosophers and of the working classes. And we now see why these three elements should be united. It is their combined action which constitutes the moral or modifying force of society.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 235

Women

“I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

This has usually been presented as something "said shortly before his death" without any definite source, but appears to be entirely spurious. The "FAQ about the life and thoughts of Albert Schweitzer" http://www.schweitzer.org/faq?lang=en#rasist asserts "This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans. Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this. It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook." This refers to some citations of it being from Afrikanische Geschichten (1938), which was translated as From My African Notebook (1939) by Mrs. C. E. B Russell Misattributed

Life, Men, Children, World

“In every class society that's ever existed, the ruling element does not rule nakedly. They always adorn their rule with myths, themes and symbols to justify their position at the apex of the social pyramid.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

"The 1% Pathology And The Myth of Capitalism" October 19, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKyX7GNHYkQ&t=218

“This whole Jewish world, comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now, at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild on the other… This may seem strange. What can there be in common between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

As quoted in Karl Marx: A Life, by Francis Wheen, London: UK, Fourth Estate (1999) p. 340.

People, World, Communication, Strong

“With tennis, they say it's a social sport you can play from six to 60 - they should say 90, your friendships go on forever.”

Don Tregonning (1928) Australian professional tennis player and coach

Source: "Life on the court" https://www.medibank.com.au/bemagazine/life-on-the-court/ (January 5, 2014)

Friendship, Sport

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

God, Age, World, Education

“As for the bourgeois state, at the present moment, we are seeking to overcome it, to overthrow it.… Our objective is total, scientific, Marxist socialism.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

As quoted in Conversations With Allende (1970) by Regis Debray

“Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech given on December 28, 1938, qouted in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler: April 1922-August 1939 pg. 93 https://books.google.com/books?id=PxZoAAAAMAAJ&q=Our+adopted+term+%27Socialist%27+has+nothing+to+do+with+Marxian+Socialism.+Marxism+is+anti-property;+true+Socialism+is+not.&dq=Our+adopted+term+%27Socialist%27+has+nothing+to+do+with+Marxian+Socialism.+Marxism+is+anti-property;+true+Socialism+is+not.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP_pa_xcLYAhVPRN8KHRk2CKsQ6AEIPjAE 1930s Context: Socialist' I define from the word 'social; meaning in the main ‘social equity’. A Socialist is one who serves the common good without giving up his individuality or personality or the product of his personal efficiency. Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not. Marxism places no value on the individual, or individual effort, of efficiency; true Socialism values the individual and encourages him in individual efficiency, at the same time holding that his interests as an individual must be in consonance with those of the community. All great inventions, discoveries, achievements were first the product of an individual brain. It is charged against me that I am against property, that I am an atheist. Both charges are false.

“I am forced to say that you have not made the right choice. I have been locked up in the socially oppressive iron casket of 'porda' for all my life. I have not been able to mix very well with people – as a matter of fact, I do not even know what is expected of a chairperson. I do not know if one is supposed to laugh, or to cry.”

Begum Rokeya (1880–1932) Bengali feminist writer and social worker

When she was asked, in 1926, to chair the Bengal women's educational conference. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/28/rokeya-sakhawat-hossain-hero-tahmima-anam Context: Although I am grateful to you for the respect that you have expressed towards me by inviting me to preside over the conference, I am forced to say that you have not made the right choice. I have been locked up in the socially oppressive iron casket of 'porda' for all my life. I have not been able to mix very well with people – as a matter of fact, I do not even know what is expected of a chairperson. I do not know if one is supposed to laugh, or to cry.

Life, People, Cry

“It is not Socialism that subverts democracy, but democracy that subverts capitalism.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 320

Democracy

“We are convinced that we must aim for contentment and happiness. Whether we take five years or 10 to raise the per capita income and increase prosperity is not going to guarantee that happiness, which includes political stability, social harmony, and the Bhutanese culture and way of life.”

Jigme Singye Wangchuck (1955) King of Bhutan 1972–2006

Quoted in The Modern Path to Enlightenment, by John Elliott of the Financial Times of London (2 May 1987,

Way, Life, Happiness

“What does anti-Semitism have to do with socialism? I would put the question this way: What does the Jew have to do with socialism? Socialism has to do with labor. When did one ever see him working instead of plundering, stealing and living from the sweat of others? As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

Way, Question

“I wouldn’t say it’s an alter ego, but I have anxiety around social situations, and I don’t like going to parties…As a performer, onstage I know my place. I’m sure of myself. There’s no doubt. It’s just existing, and it’s so lovely to get to be for an hour.”

Mitski (1990) Japanese-American singer-songwriter

Laurel Hell Source: On how her personal life differs from her onstage persona in Mitski Had to Quit Music to Love It” https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mitski-new-album-laurel-hell-cover-story-1272973/ in Rolling Stone (2021 Dec 27)

Love

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

“Capitalism in its imperialist stage arrives at the threshold of the most complete socialization of production. In spite of themselves the capitalists are dragged, as it were, into the new social order, which marks the transition from complete free competition to complete socialization. Production becomes social, but appropriation remains private. The social means of production remain the private property of a few. The framework of formally recognized free competition remains, but the yoke of a few monopolists on the rest of the population becomes a hundred times heavier, more burdensome and intolerable.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), Chapter One
Source: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Full Text of 1916 Edition

Time

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love, Life, Death, God

“An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia - and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance - represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.
A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

Truth, World, Way, Learning

“Markets are useful instruments for organizing productive activity. But unless we want to let the market rewrite the norms that govern social institutions, we need a public debate about the moral limits of markets.”

Michael J. Sandel book Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Source: Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

12 September 1848, "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail", Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 546 https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Tocqueville_-_%C5%92uvres_compl%C3%A8tes,_%C3%A9dition_1866,_volume_9.djvu/564; Translation (from Hayek, The Road to Serfdom): Original text: La démocratie étend la sphère de l'indépendance individuelle, le socialisme la resserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chaque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent que par un mot, l'égalité; mais remarquez la différence : la démocratie veut l'égalité dans la liberté, et le socialisme veut l'égalité dans la gêne et dans la servitude. 1840s

Democracy, Freedom

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102777 The last sentence is widely paraphrased as "The trouble/problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." Leader of the Opposition Variant: They’ve got the usual Socialist disease – they’ve run out of other people's money. Context: And I will go on criticising Socialism, and opposing Socialism because it is bad for Britain – and Britain and Socialism are not the same thing... It's the Labour Government that have brought us record peace-time taxation. They’ve got the usual Socialist disease – they’ve run out of other people's money.

Money, People, Problem

“Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Attributed in Talent Development for English Language Learners: Identifying and Developing Potential (2013) by Michael S. Matthews, Ph.D. SBN-13:9781618211057
2000s
Variant: Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.

Motivation, Problem, Passion, Dependency

“Falling in love is kind of like a form of socially acceptable insanity.”

Spike Jonze (1969) American director and actor

Source: her

Love

“In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except "Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it"? Money has become the grand test of virtue.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

Money

“In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

What is to be Done? (1902)

History

“Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Women, People, Feeling, Sense

“I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

Men, Truth, Law

“There are three successive states of morality answering to the three principal stages of human life; the personal, the domestic, and the social stage.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 104

Life, Success, Personality

“…racial hatred is not a natural phenomenon innate in man. It is the product of ideologies. But even if such a thing as a natural and inborn hatred between various races existed, it would not render social cooperation futile and would not invalidate Ricardo's theory of association. Social cooperation has nothing to do with personal love or with a general commandment to love one another. People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.”

Ludwig von Mises book Human Action

Part 2, VIII.84
Human Action (1949)

Love, Men, People, Peace

“No social co-operation under the division of labour is possible when some people or unions of people are granted the right to prevent by violence and the threat of violence other people from working. When enforced by violence, a strike in vital branches of production or a general strike are tantamount to a revolutionary destruction of society.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

People

“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers’ Congress (16 May 1967) “The Struggle Intensifies,” Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz (1970).

Pain, People, Fear, Confidence

“Social life is merely a web of reciprocal hypnosis where people hypnotize each other without ever realizing it”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

Life, People

“Hermione always yawned at the mention of Socialism, and refused even to read Antichrist. 'Don't talk to me about the lower classes,' she used to say. 'I hate them. They smell.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

And Ravelston adored her.
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Hate, Reading

“If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin.”

Jim Jones (1931–1978) founder and the leader of the Peoples Temple

Jones, Jim. "The Letter Killeth." Original material reprint. Department of Religious Studies. San Diego State

“Germany, on the other hand, has based its domestic policies on new and modern social principles. That is why it is a danger to English plutocracy. It is also why English capitalists want to destroy Hitlerism. They see Hitlerism as all the generous social reforms that have occurred in Germany since 1933. The English plutocrats rightly fear that good things are contagious, that they could endanger English capitalism.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

“Englands Schuld,” Illustrierter Beobachter, Sondernummer, p. 14. The article is not dated, but is from the early months of the war, likely late fall of 1939. Joseph Goebbels’ speech in English is titled “England's Guilt.”
1930s

Fear

“My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates… that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot. What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"… it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable."”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Politics, society and humanity

Fate, People, Way, Idea

“We mustn't fear to adopt the advanced management methods applied in capitalist countries (…) The very essence of socialism is the liberation and development of the productive systems (…) Socialism and market economy are not incompatible (…) We should be concerned about right-wing deviations, but most of all, we must be concerned about left-wing deviations.”

Deng Xiaoping (1904–1997) Chinese politician, Paramount leader of China

Cited by António Caeiro in Pela China Dentro (translated), Dom Quixote, Lisboa, 2004. ISBN 972-20-2696-8

Fear, Country

“The optimism of the Left was created and maintained by a strong feeling: admiration for the power of reason, certainty that the application of science to industry would revolutionise the order of human society and the condition of its individual members. The ancestral aspiration towards human brotherhood was united with faith in practical science in order to inspire either nationalism or socialism or both.”

Raymond Aron (1905–1983) French philosopher, sociologist, journalist, and political scientist

The Opium of Intellectuals (1955), Conclusion: The End of the Ideological Age?

Faith, Feeling, Optimism, Strong

“We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

"Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism" http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/reasons-of-state.htm, presented by Bakunin as a Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, at the League's first congress held in Geneva (September 1867). Variant translation: We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality. As quoted in The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism (1953) edited by Grigoriĭ Petrovich Maksimov, p. 269

“Of escape there are but three methods — two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution.”

Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State

God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)

“Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

In his interview with Joseph Pearce. " An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/arts/al0172.html." St. Austin Review 2 no. 2 (February, 2003). Interview with Joseph Pearce, Sr. (2003)

God

“Viewed from the standpoint of social science, society is composed of individuals organized in occupational groups, each group fulfilling some function of the society. Taking this fact into account, psychology – the science of human nature and human consciousness – is able to make at least one general assertion as to the form a given society must take if it is to persist as a society. It must be possible for the individual as he works to see that his work is socially necessary; he must be able to see beyond his group to the society.”

Elton Mayo (1880–1949) Australian academic

Source: Democracy and freedom. 1919, p. 37

Nature, Science

“The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both(a)reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.”

John Rawls book A Theory of Justice

Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter II, Section 11, pg. 60

Reading, Personality

“Although objectively greater demands are placed on this authority, it operates less as a public opinion giving a rational foundation to the exercise of political and social authority, the more it is generated for the purpose of an abstract vote that amounts to no more than an act of acclamation within a public sphere temporarily manufactured for show or manipulation.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Source: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1963/1991, p. 222

Exercises

“The aims of social science with respect to human organizations are like those of any other science with respect to the events and phenomena of its domain. Social scientists wish to understand human organizations, to describe what is essential in their form, aspects, and functions.”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

18
The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966)

Understanding, Science

“What does Christianity mean today? National Socialism is a religion. All we lack is a religious genius capable of uprooting outmoded religious practices and putting new ones in their place. We lack traditions and ritual. One day soon National Socialism will be the religion of all Germans. My Party is my church, and I believe I serve the Lord best if I do his will, and liberate my oppressed people from the fetters of slavery. That is my gospel.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Dated 16 October 1928
Diary excerpts

People, Religion

“As far as socialism is concerned, it is not a heavenly message like Islam but a mere system for regulating the relations between man and his utilization of the means of production in this world. If we decide to regulate our national wealth, it is not against the essence of Islam. God has created man and has given him the faculty of mind to choose between good and bad, between virtue and vice. We have chose social justice instead of exploitation of man by man and this is how we can practically help the individual Muslim and direct him to [a] virtuous life. However, the reactionaries wanted to create a rift between socialism and Islam because socialism is not in their interest.”

Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia

Speech (1972), as quoted by Ioan Myrddin (1980), A Modern History of Somalia, Wilture Enterprises (International) Ltd.

Life, God, World, Justice

“The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Source: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1963/1991, p. 27

People

“I wanted man to become a master! So he wouldn't have to live from hand to mouth! I didn't want to see another soul grow numb slaving over someone else's machines! I wanted there to be nothing, nothing, nothing left of that damned social mess! I abhorred degradation and suffering! I was fighting against poverty! I wanted a new generation of mankind! … I wanted to transform all of humanity into a world-wide aristocracy. Unrestricted, free, and supreme people. Something even greater than people.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People, World, Soul, Suffering

“The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Source: (1932), pp.6-7

“The Russians are primitive folk. Besides, Bolshevism is something that stifles individualism and which is against my inner nature. Bolshevism is worse than National Socialism — in fact, it can't be compared to it. Bolshevism is against private property, and I am all in favor of private property. Bolshevism is barbaric and crude, and I am fully convinced that that atrocities committed by the Nazis, which incidentally I knew nothing about, were not nearly as great or as cruel as those committed by the Communists. I hate the Communists bitterly because I hate the system. The delusion that all men are equal is ridiculous. I feel that I am superior to most Russians, not only because I am a German but because my cultural and family background are superior. How ironic it is that crude Russian peasants who wear the uniforms of generals now sit in judgment on me. No matter how educated a Russian might be, he is still a barbaric Asiatic. Secondly, the Russian generals and the Russian government planned a war against Germany because we represented a threat to them ideologically. In the German state, I was the chief opponent of Communism. I admit freely and proudly that it was I who created the first concentration camps in order to put Communists in them. Did I ever tell you that funny story about how I sent to Spain a ship containing mainly bricks and stones, under which I put a single layer of ammunition which had been ordered by the Red government in Spain? The purpose of that ship was to supply the waning Red government with munitions. That was a good practical joke and I am proud of it because I wanted with all my heart to see Russian Communism in Spain defeated finally.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Men, Hate, War, Education

“Both men were the spiritual children of Voltaire, both had an ironical, sceptical view of life, and a native pessimism overlaid by gaiety; both knew that the existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

On Mark Twain and Anatole France, in "Mark Twain - The Licensed Jester" in Tribune (26 November 1943); reprinted in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (1968)

Life, Men, Children

“Whoever you are, no matter what social position you have, rich or poor, always show great strength and determination, and always do everything with much love and deep faith in God. One day you will reach your goal.”

Ayrton Senna (1960–1994) Brazilian racing driver

Interview, 1991 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuJL8fKtTj8‎

Love, God, Faith

“It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-ﬁghting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley’s broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (24 March 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/wif/ As I Please (1943–1947)

Women, Youth, Dogs

“[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

From a review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940)

Life, Death, Pain, War

“It was only after the Soviet régime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers, began to show an interest in it. Burnham, although the English russophile intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old, equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Second Thoughts on James Burnham," Polemic (summer 1946)

Secret

“Gordon and his friends had quite an exciting time with their 'subversive ideas'. For a whole year they ran an unofficial monthly paper called the Bolshevik, duplicated with jellygraph. It advocated Socialism, free love, the dismemberment of the British Empire, the abolition of the Army and Navy, and so on and so forth. It was great fun. Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 3

Love, Age, Intelligence, Boy

“If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as punishment in the strict sense of the word.”

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) French sociologist (1858-1917)

Source: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 3

Sense, Country

“The crucial role communists played in organizing industrial unions in the 1930s and struggling for social reforms, peace, and civil rights strengthened rather then undermined democratic forces.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 16, p. 298

Peace

“The predicament of our time is that the Rationalists have been at work so long on their project of drawing off the liquid in which our moral ideals were suspended (and pouring it away as worthless) that we are left only with the dry and gritty residue which chokes us as we try to take it down. First, we do our best to destroy parental authority (because of its alleged abuse), then we sentimentally deplore the scarcity of 'good homes', and we end by creating substitutes which complete the work of destruction. And it is for this reason that, among much else that is corrupt and unhealthy, we have the spectacle of a set of sanctimonious, rationalist politicians, preaching an ideology of unselfishness and social service to a population in which they and their predecessors have done their best to destroy the only living root of moral behaviour; and opposed by another set of politicians dabbling with the project of converting us from Rationalism under the inspiration of a fresh rationalization of our political tradition.”

Michael Oakeshott (1901–1990) British philosopher

Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (1962)

Home, Parent, Time, Drawing

“Socialism of any type leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Death

“And in the present we are all irremediably the products of our background, our training, our personality and social role, and the structured pressures within which we operate.”

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930–2019) economic historian

Wallerstein (1974) The modern world system capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.

Personality, Training

“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from 'Time Magazine', 10 March 1952; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
1951 - 1968

Beauty, Art

“We National Socialists want the economic revolution involving the nationalization of the economy…We want in place of an exploitative capitalist economic system a real socialism, maintained not by a soulless Jewish-materialist outlook but by the believing, sacrificial, and unselfish old German community sentiment, community purpose and economic feeling. We want the social revolution in order to bring about the national revolution.”

Gregor Strasser (1892–1934) German politician, rival of Adolf Hitler inside the Nazi Psrty

As quoted in The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Thomas Childers, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, p. 84. November 1925 Reichstag speech.

Feeling, Communication

“In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.”

George Orwell book The Road to Wigan Pier

The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) - Full text online http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200391.txt

Sex, Communication, Nature, Drawing

“We have modernized and ennobled the concept of democracy. With us it means definitely the rule of the people, in accordance with its origin. We have given the principle of Socialism a new meaning. … Never have we left anyone in doubt that National-Socialism is not for export. … We do not aim at world domination, but we do intend to defend our country, and it is our new conceptions which give us the inexhaustible and ever-renewed strength to do so.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

On National-Socialism, Bolshevism & Democracy (September 10, 1938) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-national-socialism-bolshevism-and-democracy 1930s

People, World, Democracy, Country

“If you go to the protests now, you will see something you never saw before: hundreds of women. They shout and sing, they even sleep there in tents. This is not just a political revolution, it's a social revolution”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Tawakul Karman, Yemeni activist, and thorn in the side of Saleh (2011)

Women, Sleep, Singing

“For you to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian; for me no.… On the contrary, I think Socialism frees man.”

Salvador Allende (1908–1973) Chilean physician and politician

Quoted in "Allende Sees Chile Finding Her Own Way to Socialism" by Joseph Novitski, in The New York Times (4 October 1970)
Context: We start from different ideological positions. For you to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian; for me no.… On the contrary, I think Socialism frees man.

Thinking

“If we were to regard the Soviet regime as an experiment, we would have to say that the experiment has clearly demonstrated the superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)
Context: The only certain fact about Russian affairs under the Soviet regime with regard to which all people agree is: that the standard of living of the Russian masses is much lower than... the paragon of capitalism, the United States of America. If we were to regard the Soviet regime as an experiment, we would have to say that the experiment has clearly demonstrated the superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism.

“Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.”

Kurt Vonnegut book A Man Without a Country

A Man Without a Country (2005)
Context: Socialism is no more an evil word than Christianity. Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.

Women, Men, Children